More Quantum Queries

What is Life?

While it is interesting to think about the universe as being a macrocosm and ourselves as microcosms; and much as it is interesting to think of classical physics being a science of the universe (gravity, relativity, and all that), and quantum physics being a science of the indivisible particles of matter that comprise the universe (quanta), we really get no where from my belief-in-the- absolute point of view. Why is this so? It is because we are not really sure how to describe ourselves regarding the way we fit into the process. The key word that negotiates the procedure is the word think.  In order for there to be thinking, reasoning, planning, deducting, considering or any other action that involves thought processes—and any recording of these processes—we must assure that there is something—in this case a human—that is sentient and alive! Has life! and is involved in carrying the processes through. This brings up an interesting question: What is life? What is a good definition of life, one that is complete, well-documented? one that we all can understand? and one with which we all can agree? Or, more precisely, what is an unmistakable sign of life that causes no problem concerning our accepting it and agreeing with it? Unfortunately, at this point, we are speculating a lot—scarcely falling into the absolute category. This is a pretty tough category in which to fall, though; so we shouldn’t be disappointed that we fail meeting its tough standards quite often.
On the surface, this appears to be a trivial question since “everyone knows what life is.” What’s the problem? Every good biology text defines it quite well, describes it clearly, describes it completely. There’s a long list of requirements and conditions that must be present and listed precisely that spells out what life is; so what is the problem?  The problem is that not only is it really, really hard to define life in a way that’s exclusive and complete, it hasn’t been done! The question of “What is life?” has not been answered, nor will it be for some time to come.

That list, for instance, says that, for there to be life, there must be ingestion, digestion, elimination, (metabolism), procreation, ability to move, have “vitalism” (a rather old concept), etc. All these are part of what it is to have life; but some of them can be applied to things that aren’t alive; and remarkably to some things that are alive but just don’t fit on the list. For instance, fire “metabolizes” in a way; crystals grow (multiply, reproduce), and what about viruses? are they alive? what about prions (a rather unusual type of protein-based item that is the cause of the recently scary mad-cow disease)? And how about mules? They can’t procreate! No one would argue that mules are alive (other than those that aren’t!); but procreate? No. No hybrid object can procreate. We have hybrid plants and vegetables, fruit trees, etc., none of which can produce themselves—that is, their seeds (which often are “crippled” and poorly developed) simply do not sprout and grow to be the same as the hybrid from which they came. Mules are a cross between a donkey and a horse (a jack ass and a mare or a jennie and a stud.) And you didn’t know this? If you compared them to “your list” of musts, mules wouldn’t fit. So, defining life already is beginning to be complicated—way beyond being mixed up or “normal” (thinking in terms of personality)—just in fitting the definition that is set down as complete and exclusive. We are really left with a dilemma.
Many scientists cop out and fall back on a definition that merely says that life is a chemical system that can undergo Darwinian evolution! Not much of a satisfaction to those of us who feel that Darwin had a brainstorm that somehow influenced more than rightly it should. (Remember, he didn’t really do much research—didn’t have equipment, means nor time.) As I earlier said, I can go along with adaptation as resulting over millions of years to circumstances that had to be overcome to survive (and I might add that there just happened to be a lot of geomorphic activity going on millions of years ago that isolated many of those “bits” of early life, whereas, before they were closely packed—isolated them, causing them to adjust to many different types of circumstances, being on their own to adapt separately; hence the many species differences), but I can’t follow the Darwinian idea very long before I begin to think of it as falling into that grim area called chance—and chance has a snow ball’s “chance” in Hell than to bring such complexity into the simplest of living things, much less a complex living thing. (Now this is my opinion; so don’t go off huffy! Besides, my going with Intelligent Design is pretty popular, too—joining up with some pretty smart scientists.)
Don’t get too disjointed when I say that many scientists are doing their own research, digging into the evidence, recognizing shortcomings of prior research, and are concerned that too much is speculated, and in the end finding that Darwinian precepts (alleged, I should say), just don’t fit the circumstance of our coming to be as we are—sentient, quite inquisitive, loquacious, devious (at times), unusual and singular, etc.—end products of a rather long time (millions of years) of adaptation to circumstances that have put us on top of the food chain—if you don’t invade a shark’s territory, that is. And as unusual as we are, we still don’t know what life is! how it came about! when it came about! nor what combination of events started it! We just don’t know. But, then, there are many things we don’t know. In a different page, you will remember how much importance I placed on our uniqueness—being the only one as us in the universe. It is rather interesting that we make such a stock of finding other life that exists in the universe. Maybe we better find out just what life is on our planet before we go off on a tangent to determine whether life (as we know it) is on another. What do you think? E-mail me to share your thoughts. I hope you don’t disagree too much with me. If you do, I certainly will honor that you do.
Do you know what bothers me so much about the Darwinian approach to how we came to be, how different species came to be, how every living thing came to be?—plant and animal? What bothers me most is that all of the after-speculation is based on the assumption that life began as the Darwinian researchers say it did—which is that “something” started a life form (primitive, to be sure and composed of just the right chemicals—including amino-acids, proteins, etc., living in a “primordial” soup) that replicated itself exactly, and continued doing this until, enough replications triggered a growth pattern containing all the elements necessary to continue all life to the complexity that it is today—branches that led to both plant and animal life (has anyone looked around at the plethora of life forms that exist? and wondered a bit about this scenario?) According to Darwinian evolutional belief, there were “good” mutations that were passed on exactly to the next generation; selective interaction among the primitive elements occurred; only the fittest survived the circumstances surrounding them; and ultimately there were many “branches” that developed from this single primitive life form—developed  into the myriad of species we find today, and into those we still haven’t discovered. This is true. We are still finding species that have no relationship with others that we’ve already cataloged with such care. One can ask: what would have occurred had there been no exact replications?  Would there have been any Darwinian evolution? Of course, the question is moot, since the argument against it would be that there were exact replications; otherwise we’d not be around to think about it; however, I still wonder if this is true. I’m not alone.

You will notice that the title of this page is “More Quantum Queries.” How does this question about what life is tie in with quantum mechanics? is there any relationship? Of course, there is. Whenever you think about anything that exists as we know it, you know that it consists of energy—the whole universe, actually. Knowing this, you are forced to consider that life is certainly no less energy than everything about us is energy. It is easy to draw a relationship.

To begin, consider that what really makes it all happen are the DNA codes that exist in every living thing.  Knowing the origin of these codes that give all the “life” directions would be, in my opinion, tantamount to knowing how life began; and, moreover, would tell us what life is, what it is all about. The genome is the basis of all life, and knowing how it functions would be the answer to knowing how life functions.  But we are just now with a complete count of its components. Knowing what they all do will take years—if we ever find out, for sure. Think of your computer for a second or so, how it stores information on your hard drive. Now, think of a gigabyte (or more) of information contained in your DNA—each “bit” tells the living object of which it is a part what to do, and how to do it. This is the basis of life—the DNA, and regarding just how non-directed (or Non-Designed) actions of electro-chemical and physical substances can produce this information that is contained in the DNA, we have to look to more than the product of chance.  Just where in the DNA, or what in the DNA is the “master switch”, the turning on of which triggers life? In any form as we know it? Plant or animal? Perhaps the riddle of what life is is contained in the DNA? It’s probable, but just how even the riddle is found, much less its answer, is a task we are not up to at the moment—if ever we will be. The big question that should occupy us at this time is “just how did the mass of information that makes up the DNA of the most simple of animals, yeast or plants get organized in the first place?” Knowing this might give even Darwinian evolution a jump start. Evolution (my term is adaptation) could possibly add new information (by the adaptation process) to what is already contained in the DNA; but without the beginning information which triggers life, all the adaptation (or evolution) is worth naught. That first collection of information is so essential that we might as well close the book on ever knowing what life is (let alone understanding it) if we don’t appreciate that it “came with the territory”, and is a product of Intelligent Design! A Designer was involved—with astronomical Intelligence. And the Designer’s first try was perfect.

It comes to me that we live in an awesomely well designed universe, designed by an awesome Designer (Creator), that perhaps we are searching for answers to which the kinds of science with which we are dealing have none. Perhaps we can liken our “missing” science to the “dark matter” that makes up most of the universe, the nature of which we don’t know. Perhaps it is like ourselves (the end of the line, as it were) who have an unknown consciousness that surrounds us (a sort of “quantum ether”), giving energy to our mind; indeed, is our mind. Perhaps all of these things; but until we delve into these mysteries and come up with some answers—with which we all can agree—we’ll have to keep on “in the dark”—continue being like part of the “dark matter”, being like part of that hidden “ocean of energy” about which we aren’t sure, being like part of that mysterious consciousness that gives rise to our mind and is the non-local “power” behind the whole universe. Perhaps we are all figments of our own imagination, and nothing is real, but only seems so to keep us from being non-existent? Some quanta physicists insist that the only way we can be sure that something exists, indeed, the only means that give anything existence is an act of observation—it has to be observed, which is tantamount to being “measured”. It’s a difficult enigma in which we are involved. However difficult it is, there is something that, abstract as it may be, gives us a straight route out of it; and that is by accepting our creation on Faith. There is no other answer that comes to my mind regarding getting out of the situation riddled with riddles. It simply is not going to be solved. It more difficultly will be solved by accepting it on Faith; but, isn’t that what we are doing anyway? even the evolutionists, though their “faith” that life “just happened” is way wrong? So, we still are left with the question: Just what is life?